First Day of Rehab on the Knee

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I have only been four days removed from my knee surgery, but considering I have yet to take any of the pain meds, I felt I was doing really well and healing nicely. I even started my pre-rehab stretches a half a day early, and have felt really good about how the knee felt overall. So I was excited to get the official rehab started today. I spent yesterday moving around the house without the aid of crutches, but took them with me today because it was raining and I didn't want to take any chances walking in the rain on a bad knee. But when I got inside the rehab center I started limping along without the aid of crutches. The injury rehab specialist noticed right away and commented on it, telling me that for injuries like mine I shouldn't be able to walk without crutches for at least another week. He was also very surprised when I told him that I was not in any pain. Of course, that all changed when he started putting me through the exercises. I'm not going to lie, tears were rolling down my face, but I didn't say a word and kept letting him bend and stretch my knee and legs in ways they were never designed to be bent. Finally, at the end he said he needed to take a measurement to indicate how far I could bend my knee at this point. So, grimacing through the pain, I bent my knee to the point where I thought I was going to die. He asked me to hold it while he measured, and then told me I was at a 99. I asked him what that meant, and he said it was a measure of the angle of the bend. He said the goal after knee surgery was for patients to get to 90 within 2 weeks of surgery. Frustrated that I had only gotten to 99 and not closer to 90 (especially since my knee had been feeling so good prior to this), I asked if I could try again. He had a surprised look on his face, but said okay. This time I really pushed it, fighting through the pain and the burning sensation in my knee to get it to bend as far as I could. I was determined to get as close to that 90 degree mark as I could. When he finally took the measurement, he exclaimed that I had hit 105. I was devastated at hearing this, and let out a few expletives under my breath. He asked me, "What was that for?" I told him I was angry that I couldn't get my knee as close to 90 degrees as I had wanted to. He exclaimed, "Close to 90? You bent your knee way past 90 my friend. That was one of the best first-day bends I have ever seen for this type of surgery!" Baffled, I said to him, "But I couldn't get close to 90, my measurements were too high." He laughed and said, "The higher the number, the better! You want to get that number as high as you can!" At that moment I felt so proud of myself for my achievement on the first day. He warned me though that I was going to feel the pain later from stretching my knee so far on the first day. And boy was he right! I went to stand up and felt like an atomic bomb went off inside my knee! I couldn't wait to get home to get the knee iced down! And here I lay now with the leg propped up high and my knee covered in ice packs, and the pain throbbing throughout my leg. But I have determined that I am not going to take any painkillers throughout this ordeal, so once the knee goes numb from all the ice, I should be feeling much, much better. ...until we do it all over again tomorrow morning! I promise you, tomorrow I am not going to try and bend my knee to 105 degrees. If he says 90 is the goal, then 90 is where I'm going to stop! lol